Page 57 of Demon's Bane

I shake my head, fingers still lightly brushing over hers. “As far as I know, they have applications in ritual magick, but beyond that, the coven hasn’t been forthcoming about exactly what type. In this realm, they’re used by healing practitioners in their work, and are being studied as a power source by demons much, much smarter than I in the larger universities.”

“Hmm,” Joan murmurs, still tracing the crystal. “There’s so much I don’t know about this realm.”

I chuckle at the curiosity in her tone. “Anything you want to know, I’ll do my best to answer. All you have to do is—”

My words cut off at the sharp sound of cracking rock. Echoing down the tunnel, it rumbles the stone beneath our feet in a low, ominous warning.

“Rhett?” Joan asks, panic creeping into her voice. “What is—”

A moment later, the crashing of a cave-in has us both lunging for each other.

“Down!” I order, and Joan ducks low enough for me to get both my hands onto her head and lean my body over hers as best I can.

I pull my wings forward and wrap my tail around her waist to anchor her to me, as a stark, horrifying realization crashes over me.

Goddess damn me, how have I never realized how breakable my little mate truly is?

From the first time I saw her, Joan has loomed larger than life in my mind. Ever-present and consuming, a force to obliterate and remake me completely.

But here, now, sheltering her from the mountain that threatens to come down on our heads, her petite frame seems far too fucking fragile.

I should have never brought her here.

I should have never been so careless with her safety.

Joan trembles in my arms, clutching fiercely to me. When a vicious rumble of earth and stone shakes the cave floor, she whimpers low in her throat and her blunt nails dig in where she’s gripping my forearm. The sour scent of her fear rises between us and makes my stomach roll.

There’s nothing I can do, nowhere I can move us without knowing where the cave in is happening or how long it will last.

All I can do is be here and hold her and pray to any deities who might be listening that this is not where it ends for us.

“Look at me,” I tell her, speaking the words into the shell of her ear so she can hear them over the roaring around us.

Joan obeys, and the fear in her eyes sends a crack of pain through the center of my chest.

“I’ve got you, little mate.”

Joan’s lower lip shakes, but she buries her face into my chest and holds me tighter. I rest my chin on the top of her head and curl as much of myself around her as I can. It’s the only shield I have to offer her, and one I’d gladly see battered and broken for her sake.

When the commotion finally subsides, we stay right where we are. I don’t trust that there will not be some secondary cave-in, and it’s not until a few silent, tense minutes have passed that I finally loosen my grasp on her and survey the wreckage.

The air is thick with dust, and as it settles, an icy wave of dread breaks over me.

There, blocking the path behind us, is a ruin of stone and crystal rising all the way to the tunnel’s ceiling.

18

Joan

I can’t stop shaking.

Clutching to Rhett with my eyes screwed tightly shut, I can’t get my trembling under control or stop the panicked tears that slip from the corners of my eyes.

We’re going to die.

We’re going to die under a mountain’s worth of rock in a whole other realm. I’m never going to go home. I’m never going to see my shop or my friends or Poe again.

Rhett and I are never going to figure out what the hell’s going on between us.